Arkansas officials ask courts to clear path for executions

Arkansas prepared again yesterday to conduct its first executions since 2005, wary and weary after a series of court decisions gutted its unprecedented plan to put eight men to death before the end of the month.

Lawyers for the state were asking courts to clear a path for a double execution scheduled for last night. One legal hurdle the state had to overcome in its plan to execute Stacey Johnson and Lendell Lee was a court order preventing it from using its supply of vercuronium bromide, one of the three drugs in Arkansas' lethal injection protocol. Another obstacle was an Arkansas Supreme Court decision giving Johnson time to pursue advanced DNA testing that his lawyers say could clear him.

The state originally set four double executions over an 11-day period in April. The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The state says that the executions need to be carried out before its supply of one lethal injection drug, midazolam, expires on April 30. The first two executions were cancelled because of court decisions, and legal rulings have put the other six in doubt.

Representatives from the attorney general's office were at the state Supreme Court yesterday hoping justices would overturn a decision by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray that halted the use of vecuronium bromide in any execution. McKesson Corp says that the state obtained the drug under false pretenses and that it wants nothing to do with executions.

"McKesson was duped ... into providing the drugs," lawyer John Tull said, arguing that the company could see its reputation and bottom line suffer.